


blink before i do

by duckmoles



Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Complicated Relationships, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Manipulation, Morally Ambiguous Character, Pandora's Vault Prison, Torture, Unhealthy Relationships, prison fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-25 22:35:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30096183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duckmoles/pseuds/duckmoles
Summary: Quackity trembles when he uses the shears.(Dragging each other down, one visit at a time.)
Relationships: Alexis | Quackity & Clay | Dream
Comments: 12
Kudos: 109





	blink before i do

**Author's Note:**

> speedran this mf!! standard disclaimers apply. read the tags, it's rough in here.

Quackity trembles when he uses the shears, even more when he hefts up the axe in his hands to bring it down on Dream’s leg. He’s not a warrior, never has been, but this is different, he thinks as he carves lines down Dream’s arm. This is nothing like war, like Pogtopia tearing through the land or L’Manburg burning into the ground. This is Schlatt, staring at him with a dark gleam in his eye and his words slurring together like honey. This is Wilbur Soot, stepping down from presidency with gunpowder clinging to his fingertips. This is him, gesturing Technoblade to his non-demise, anvil anchored over his head as they read out his charges, guilty until proven innocent. 

Dream screams, and the blood splatters across Quackity’s once-pristine white shirt, and Quackity’s scar aches.

There’s a pause, no sound in the jail cell besides both of their pants, Dream’s of pain, Quackity’s of something he doesn’t dare examine.

Dream is the first to break his silence. “This,” he says, and his voice cracks before he clears it with a painful cough, “this means nothing, you know. You have no leverage on me, and you don’t have the guts to kill me.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Quackity says. “I’m not going to kill you. I’m not stupid, Dream. Not like you.”

Dream coughs again. “You won’t break me,” he says. “I’ve had worse.”

Quackity stares down at him, at the single eye peeking through Dream’s mask, glaring and tired and pained at once. Resolute. “No,” he says, holding up the shears again. “You haven’t.”

-

The axe has always been Dream’s weapon, always carried by his side. Nightmare, he had called it, and they had laughed and said that nothing was more nightmarish than Dream himself. 

There’s blood pouring from Dream’s shoulder where Quackity had sawed at it with the axe’s sharp end painstakingly. It would’ve been faster to use the sword, but that wasn’t the point, was it? Dream had screamed the whole way through, as the axe swung over and over. Quackity holds it in his hands, his knuckles pale where he grips it. When he had walked in that day, Dream was ready for him, a taunt on his tongue, the word “Schlatt” slipping off his tongue like oil before Quackity had hefted the axe and brought it down to silence him. There was little silence, after. 

“I didn’t think you were the type to resort to this,” Dream had said during a lull, his voice muffled by the blood that had bubbled up in his throat. 

“You don’t know me,” Quackity had replied, taken a deep breath, and lifted the axe again.

“Tell me,” Quackity says now, the sound of the elder guardians ringing in his ears. “Tell me what’s in that book.” 

Dream’s eye peers from the crack in his mask, bright and shining. Quackity wants to smack the mask off his face, but he likes to tell himself he still has an ounce of dignity, even if that dignity is rotting and broken and shredded to pieces. 

“You’re playing a losing game,” Dream rasps, voice hoarse from screaming. “This is a gamble you can’t win, Quackity.” 

“Shut the fuck up,” Quackity says. “You lost your gamble, and that’s why you’re in here. Because you failed.” His arm twinges a little from the strain of holding up the weapon for so long. He wasn’t made for this. He doesn’t care.

“I’m still alive,” Dream says, a little desperate and a lot vindictive. “I didn’t fail. In fact - in fact I have more power now than I ever did, Quackity. I control life - life and death itself.” His words grow more frantic as he speaks, like water boiling over, and he coughs again before he grins, teeth stained and lips cracking. “I’m a god.” 

“You did fail,” Quackity says. “You did and you’re too much of a coward to admit it. Look at you, Dream. You’re not a god, and you know why?”

Dream’s throat crunches underneath the weight of the axe, red spilling out over the glassy obsidian. He doesn’t scream this time as Quackity leans in close, scarred eye staring at scarred eye. 

“Gods don’t bleed.”

-

Quackity stops bringing things to clean the sword’s edge off in between sessions, because he’s found that it’s rustier when the metal is stained, it hurts more, and there’s a sickening sense of satisfaction as he watches blood splatter on blood splatter on blood. If he peeled back the layers he could find a memory of every visit. 

Dream doesn’t do much anymore when Quackity walks in. At first, he had been ready with a taunt or a jab, designed to hurt, mentions of Sapnap and George and Karl and Schlatt and Wilbur and - Once, and only once, had Dream greeted Quackity with a plea for mercy. That was the time Quackity had brought cobwebs with him, catching Dream and watching him squirm, unable to move as Quackity cut deeper. 

Now, he just stares when the lava falls behind Quackity again, the heat searing at his back. Silent, glaring. Ever the monster that he is. 

He’s even stopped screaming as much, though Quackity doesn’t know if that’s the countless times that Quackity has cut his throat, leaving it to heal only by respawn. Even then, respawn doesn’t stitch up all wounds. Quackity’s missing teeth and aching eye is testament to that. 

The only time that he talks is after, while Quackity catches his breath and waits for Sam to bring him back out and Dream, bloodied and broken, often fresh off another respawn, lays in the corner of his prison cell, too tired and too weak to even get up. 

“Schlatt was right,” Dream says, biting and bitter, voice like ragged sandpaper. “You deserve everything he ever did to you, and worse. Not even Schlatt resorted this low.” 

“ _Shut up_ ,” Quackity says through gritted teeth. He can hear Schlatt’s voice in his ear every time he starts the slots up again, can smell his alcohol rotten breath when he wakes up in the middle of the night in a desperate sweat. “Shut up,” he says again. “You don’t get to say that to me. How long did you play with Tommy again? Or, sorry, is the past tense too strong?” 

Dream smiles under his mask, the first time since Quackity’s started visiting. It feels vile, looks vile, and somewhere in the back of Quackity’s mind, in a place he hasn’t managed to stomp out no matter how hard he’s tried, he wonders if this is how Tommy felt.

“You’re playing now too,” Dream points out. “What is this, another game to get Schlatt back? Spin the wheel, putting all your chips in on torture until the dice rolls in your favor?” The eye that Quackity can see burns bright, and even with his arm shattered from one rough blow and his leg a mangled mess of blood and bone, his words slip out like toxins, like poison sinking under Quackity’s skin. 

"You're mixing up your metaphors." Quackity doesn’t have the strength to lift his sword again. He’s not Dream, not Technoblade, not born and raised a warrior since birth. He’s only ever held a weapon if he had to. All he has now are his own words, and those he knows have little power. The only universal language is violence. Violence, and blood, and subjugation. 

He tucks his sword away, not minding it flicking blood over his face as he does so, walks closer to Dream.

Dream doesn’t react, doesn’t even flinch, only shuts his eyes as Quackity, always shorter and weaker but now far more powerful, closes his hands around Dream’s throat. Digs his thumbs in deeper.

-

In a twist of inspiration, Quackity brings a bow and arrows. Sam gives him a questioning look when Quackity hands them over, but doesn’t say anything, only lets him through as he always does, resigned and exhausted and guilty. Quackity pins Dream to the wall like a butterfly, watches as he tries to move but can’t, slumping instead, quiet. Quackity had put an arrow through his throat sometime during the beginning.

Quackity tires out faster, somehow, his shoulder twinging at the strain, and he wonders what would happen if he left Dream right now. Would he still be there when Quackity came back tomorrow, spared from the relief of respawn? 

Quackity sighs and goes to retrieve the arrows. Wouldn’t do to have Dream have them, even if he wouldn’t be able to do much with them. 

Dream crumbles to the floor in a heap of bone and skin. He’s thin from starvation, the potatoes that Quackity knows Sam has been dropping in through a machine left untouched. Even if he did manage to escape now, Quackity isn’t sure how far he would manage to get before he was brought back or killed a final time. Hell, a random zombie could probably take him out now. 

Quackity wrenches the arrow out from Dream’s throat. “Tell me what the book says,” he demands, and the thought strikes him that he hasn’t asked for that in a long time. Weeks, maybe. He brushes the thought aside to lift Dream’s head up by his hair, watches achingly as his throat slowly stitches back together. 

It’s like a shadow is talking when Dream speaks. A shadow of a shadow. Even less, but his voice rings out in Quackity’s head loud and clear as the gongs of the elder guardians: “Whatever the monster I am, you’re one and the same.” 

Quackity lets go of Dream’s hair and backs away. “You -” he says. “You’re a coward. Even here, with nothing in your possession and the entire fucking world against you, all you can do is lie and lie and hope that one of your lies is pretty enough for people to take pity on you.” 

“Maybe,” Dream says, voice muffled. “But you’re here too.” 

Quackity’s arm shakes. The left side of his face feels numb. He can feel the pickaxe tearing through his face like it was nothing. 

“Sam,” Quackity says, then repeats, louder, “Sam!”

The lava wall comes down a moment later, and Quackity retreats back onto the platform. 

“Fuck you,” Quackity says. “Fuck you and I’d say go to hell if that weren’t too good for you.” 

Dream says nothing more. 

-

Quackity brings the shears again. He hasn’t since the first time, because Dream had tried to wrestle it away from him before he’d found the extent of his dwindling strength, but now Quackity knows that Dream knows better than to try.

For this, he has to be close to Dream. Nothing like the impersonality of the sword or axe or bow or crossbow or kicking Dream into the lava to watch him burn. The shears are precise, and require a delicate hand. 

“The book,” Quackity says, and the words feel somehow foreign on his tongue. 

Dream stays silent. 

“The book,” Quackity repeats. 

There’s no delight in this. At the beginning, Quackity would relish every scream of pain, every shudder and biting comment, but now it’s as much a chore as another. Quackity’s Sisyphus, and Dream is his boulder, a burden that he pushes and shoves all the way up the mountain each day only for his strength to give out at the end and the rock to roll back down to the bottom, doomed to start again each day. 

Violence begets violence begets violence, Quackity thinks in a moment of clarity, and thinks of Dream at the beginning, in his netherite armor, following George around like a puppy, Dream watching as explosions filled the sky and a country burned to ash. Thinks of himself, in a clean pressed suit, waiting for the election results to come in, himself hunting down Technoblade for execution. Blood on his tongue, blood on his hands. 

Quackity’s hand is steady as he slices, and he doesn’t tremble.

**Author's Note:**

> tell me ur thoughts in the comments or at my tumblr ducknotfound.tumblr.com!! their relationship is so interesting to me.


End file.
